Yes, Madam Speaker, obviously this matter of the education of our communities is important. I think we must take certain things into account. Let me tell the hon member a story. Some people - South Africans - organised a meeting in Hammanskraal in the middle of all this violence and said, "Away with these foreigners", and for the reasons I read out earlier. They said they were thieves and this, that and the other. And it was the community that said: "If you don't stop talking that nonsense, we will beat you up. These people have never done anything. We live with them here very well and there is not going to be any such thing here in Hammanskraal. If you continue with that campaign of yours, we will beat you up." And so Hammanskraal had no such problem.
The reason I mention this, hon member, is because, as I was trying to say earlier, it is important to understand properly what the real causes of this thing were. If we identify the causes wrongly, we will provide solutions which won't solve the problem. Sure, we have to educate the communities, as you indicated, against xenophobia. That is very important.
We must also take into account that the people who killed and burned others, are people who acted with criminal intent. They might hide their criminality behind the issue about the foreigners, this and that and the other. It is important to deal with this.
I do not know when the hon member got to learn of this word "makwerekwere". [Interjections.] In the Home Affairs committee? Ok! [Laughter.] Yes well, this word has been in currency among the African communities ever since Inkosi Buthelezi was a 10-year old. [Laughter.] It didn't pop up now. It is an old word. You don't use it and you are not supposed to use it in the presence of the foreigners, you use it when they are not there. [Laughter.] It is not a good word. Where you have that expression now, it would be wrong to conclude that it is an expression of xenophobia. It is not. It has been around, I think, since the mines were opened and migrant labour came from around the region. It derives from an ethnic group in Zimbabwe, the Makorekore. It was translated as "makwerekwere". It did not result in attacks on foreign nationals. The portfolio committee might indeed discuss it, but I think we have got to go a bit deeper than that to deal with this. It may be that you can try, hon member, to attempt to forbid the name. I am not sure that you will succeed, but the use of the name itself hasn't historically produced these attacks on foreign nationals. I agree that it is not a good word. It should be stopped.
The Batswana in Botswana have an expression for Tswana-speaking South Africans, who come and stay in Botswana. They call them "batla ka sepore", those who come by rail. [Laughter.] You can go and tell the Batswana to stop using that word, but I doubt if they will stop it.